The Struggle Within

Exploring the Themes and Techniques in Kafka's "Description of a Struggle" (1/2)

Hello once more, dear Kafka aficionados! Today, we will explore “Description of a Struggle” (Beschreibung eines Kampfes, on page 25 of the PDF). This tale represents one of Kafka’s initial and perhaps most perplexing compositions. So, fasten your seatbelts for a rollercoaster ride into the bizarre and dreamlike—excluding the “The Fat Man” section (II, iii sqq.), which I’ll examine in the next post—a quintessential Kafkaesque experience, innit?

“Description of a Struggle” is a significant work in Kafka’s oeuvre. It’s one of his earliest extant pieces and, as mentioned last week, the first one he (reluctantly) shared with his friend and eventual literary executor, Max Brod. Brod was so taken with it that he cited Kafka in a review as a prime example of the elevated standard of contemporary German literature.

Kafka allegedly started writing the story in 1904 (when he was 20) and kept revising it until his literary breakthrough in 1912. Reiner Stach points out that Kafka worked on “Descript…